Community News
We welcome with great pleasure the following new members: Spiro Macris of Wilmington, North Carolina, and Ian Price of Los Angeles, California. We are very pleased to announce the awarding of the first Society Farsarotul Grant of $1,000. to Dr. Spiro Shituni, Chairman of the Department of Ethnomusicology at the University of Tirana. Dr. Shituni ...
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From the Editor
Among our community’s several blessings is George Moran, who — aside from being one of the nicest persons I know — is arguably the most knowledgeable person in the world on the subject of the Vlach villages of Greece. For years, I have been trying to persuade George to sit down and share some of ...
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Letter from the President
Dear Members and Friends of the Society Farsarotul: I wanted to take this opportunity to announce to one and all an exciting new initiative we are undertaking here at the Society Farsarotul: our Overseas Task Force. Immigrant communities such as ours are most alive when they maintain contact with their homelands — in our case, ...
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Touring the Vlach Villages of Greece
Seventy-eight years after the publication of Wace & Thompson’s Nomads of the Balkans, the Vlachs and their villages have suddenly inspired cultural interest and academic inquiry. Indeed, we owe a debt of gratitude to those two British scholars who, to our good fortune, left an archaeological dig in Thessaly to study our people. As one who ...
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From the Editor
There are two great global revolutions underway — and both have the potential to affect our people and our position in the world. One is a revolution in thought, while the other is a very physical and very violent revolution. The revolution in thought The issue of human rights has joined the goal of peace ...
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Did You Know What Other People Have to Say about Us?
Did You Know… What Other People Have to Say about Us? “In the north and west [of Greece] you still find descendants of shepherd clans, like the Sarakatsans and the Vlachs, who have preserved a separate and distinctive identity to this day. The Vlachs are particularly interesting because their language, in contrast to all the ...
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Scenes from Vlach Cultural Life
The Cofa Cofas such as those shown in the photograph below have always been some of the most beautiful and popular utensils in the Vlach household. They are the products of the town cooper, who made barrels and other wooden containers — a profession that has all but disappeared in these days of steel and plastic. ...
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The Macedonian Romanians of St. Louis
St. Louis is one of the major cities in the United States to have attracted a significant number of Macedonian Romanian immigrants in the first half of this century. While the majority of our people settled on the East coast — predominantly in New York City, Bridgeport (Connecticut) and Woonsocket (Rhode Island) — many were ...
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Community News
Our community has sustained two tragic losses: Roger Fatse of New York, and Tom Caciavelly of St. Louis. Both were members of the Society Farsarotul — and both were successful professionals who died before their time. Tom Caciavelly’s life is described in the article about the St. Louis community in this issue of the Newsletter. ...
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“Instant Modernization” in America
A prime concern of modern historians and social scientists has been the huge change in the qualities of human life between what are called “traditional” and “modern” societies. Whereas our relationships were once largely face-to-face and conducted with people whom we knew, nowadays many of the people with whom we come into contact remain anonymous; ...
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Cultural Forum: The Poetry of Traditional Language
Those of us who were raised in societies which still have many traditional elements — and that includes much of rural America as well as the Balkans — have a unique insight into the changing nature of language. We know that everyday language is losing its poetry because we can compare our speech with that ...
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Did You Know What Other People Have to Say about Us?
“After a long circuitous ascent just before the Katara Pass (`the Damned’), the only motor-crossing of central Pindos, Metsovo appears to the southeast. It is a singular Greek village, justly famed for its stunning location, its popular architecture and handicrafts, and its inhabitants, who still dress in their traditional clothes. Many of the Metsovites are ...
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Portrait of a Family in Baieasa, 1912
Left to right: Marion Brikates, John Tegu (father), Chiamo Tegu (mother), Grandmother Tegu, Bigger boy, Peter, Lucia Perkins and T. Steven Tegu. This excellent portrait of a family group was taken by an unknown Vlach photographer in Baieasa, Greece, in 1912, when the science of photography was in its infancy. The large and clumsy camera ...
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From the Editor
The Steve Tegu Issue Several people complained that there was no article by Steve Tegu in the last issue of our Newsletter. This was entirely the Editor’s fault, not Steve’s, and to make up for it, we have obtained not just one but two articles from Dr. Tegu for this issue, which we dedicate to him. Many ...
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Community News
We have suffered several tragic losses recently: two veteran members of the Society Farsarotul from New York — George Gecca and Christy (Kiciu) Balamaci — and one of our longtime Directors from Bridgeport — Constantine (Cociu) Jombur, who was also a very active leader in the Society Perivolea. With their passing, we have lost an ...
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The Evil Eye
The mothers of Baieasa, like all the women of Epirus, had the difficult task of raising the children without the benefit of doctors — and often without the help of their husbands. I suppose that in ancient times, the men were absent from home for long periods of time, while serving in the army and ...
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Cultural Forum: Strangers in Our Own Land
For a number of years now — and perhaps too many, at that — I have devoted an inordinate amount of time, when not actually traveling to the Vlach villages of Greece and Yugoslavia, to thinking about our culture and our precarious survival. Such reflection is the special reward of travel — for the mere ...
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Did You Know What Other People Have to Say about Us?
“Vovousa lies right on the Aous River, whose milky green waters are spanned by a high-arched fourteenth-century bridge. On either side wooded ridges rise steeply to the skyline. Just downstream a stretch of riverbank meadow makes an idyllic camping site (turn left off the road onto the old path just past the Vovousa roadsign). That ...
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Late-Breaking News from Our Midwestern Correspondent
Greetings. On one of my recent expeditions to meet Vlach families in the Midwest, I was fortunate enough to meet Mrs. Radka Radevski. Her parents were part of a group of Aromanians from the village of Gopesh (now in Yugoslavia) who settled in Ellwood City, PA. Radka is very proud of her ethnic heritage. Her ...
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